Elfyn Evans finished the second day of the Portugal Rally with a 13s gap over fellow Toyota driver, Kalle Rovanperä.
Despite battles with Sebastien Loeb and Thierry Nueville, the Welsh man made good use of his road position to give himself the advantage going into Saturday.
The rally started on Thursday with the first Special Stage and it was Thierry Neuville that struck first, taking the stage win by 0.6s from his Hyundai teammate Ott Tanak. Set on 2.82km of asphalt roads around the banks of the Mondego River in the country’s former capital, The WRC drivers put on a show for the fans that lined the streets.
Craig Breen took third with a gap of 1.4s to the leading Hyundai but Breen’s teammate, Gus Greensmith, kept pace to make it into the top four after the first test.
Friday saw stages 2-9 being run which were split with three in the morning and five in the afternoon. The morning was led by returning Sebastien Loeb in his Ford Puma. Loeb hasn’t been in the WRC since the opening Monte Carlo round where he took victory, and he made sure he brought his strong gravel form to Portugal.
Loeb was 0.5s faster than Toyota man Elfyn Evans over the first three tests. It wasn’t just the top two that were close however as the top six were covered by seven seconds. It was Evans that initially got the jump on the Frenchman however he lost 10s in the final morning stage.
Having opted for soft tyres, Thursday’s leader Neuville was third but 2.8s behind Evans. Ott Tanak was still in touch with the leaders as well as Kalle Rovanperä. Both drivers ended the morning with the same times.
Loeb’s lead would’t last however as he crashed his Ford on the opening run of the afternoon stages. The car went wide going around a left hander and collided with a wall. The car had its right rear wheel ripped from the car and ground to a halt.
Evans would assume the lead for much of the afternoon but his lead wouldn’t grow more than 10s going into the final stage of the day.
Shadowing the Toyota had been Neuville but on Stage eight the Belgian suffered a driveshaft issue which saw him drop 1m 30s and was seventh going into the final stage.
It wasn’t a good day if your name is Sebastien either as Ogier had suffered from two punctures, the second one meant that he didn’t have a spare tyre to use so he had to park the car.
Rovanperä would be the driver to take the fight to Evans, the Finn won stage eight which lifted him to second ahead of Dani Sordo.
Stage nine took place at the Lousada Rallycross circuit where the cars run head-to-head. Evans would end the day 13s clear of his teammate with Dani Sordo cementing his third postion.
Takamoto Katsuta would end a strong day for the Toyota contingent in fourth place. The Japenese driver is currently 49.6s away from Evans at the front. The top six would be made up of Gus Greensmith and Pierre-Louis Loubet for the M-Sport Ford squad.
